France’s far-left are looking to Le Pen as their saviour

Two years ago, Marine Le Pen was a laughing stock, not just in France but around the world. She was never likely to beat Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election but her barrack room performance in the live televised debate with her rival shredded her reputation. While Macron embarked on his campaign to conquer the world that summer, Le Pen disappeared from public life, reportedly plunged into a fit of depression by her humiliating defeat.

Although she emerged again in the autumn of 2017 it was without her two most trusted lieutenants, Florian Philippot and Marion Maréchal. The latter resigned from political life to launch her own college, while Philippot fell out with Le Pen over strategy and formed his own party, The Patriots, which has sunk with a speed that should serve as a warning for Britain’s Change UK.

Both the departures have served Le Pen and her party well. Maréchal and Philippot despised one another; she was a economic liberal and a social conservative, he was a social liberal obsessed with leaving the European Union.